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IMMORTALITY  AND  THE  NEW  THEODICY.  By 
Georgb  a.  Gordon,  D.  D.    1896. 

HUMAN  IMMORTALITY.  Two  supposed  Objections 
to  the  Doctrine.  By  Professor  William  James.  1897. 

DIONYSOS  AND  IMMORTALITY:  The  Greek  Faith 
in  Immortality  as  afEected  by  the  rise  of  Individual- 
ism.   By  President  Benjamin  Ide  Wheeler.     1898. 

THE  CONCEPTION  OF  IMMORTALITY.  By  Pro- 
fessor JOSIAH  ROYCB.      1899. 

LIFE  EVERLASTING.    By  John  Fiske, LL.D.  1900. 

SCIENCE  AND  IMMORTALITY.  By  William  Oslbr, 
M.  D.,  LL.  D.     1904. 

THE  ENDLESS  LIFE.  By  Samubl  M.  Crothers, 
D.  D.     1905. 

INDIVIDUALITY  AND  IMMORTALITY.  By  Professor 
Wilhelm  Ostwald.     1906. 

THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY.  By  Charles  F. 
Dole.     1907. 

BUDDHISM  AND  IMMORTALITY.  By  William  S. 
BiGHLOw,  M.  D.     1908. 

IS  IMMORTALITY  DESIRABLE?  By  G.  Lowes 
Dickinson,  Fellow  of  King's  College,  Cambridge. 
1909. 

EGYPTIAN  CONCEPTIONS  OF  IMMORTALITY. 
By  George  A.  Rbisnbr.    191  i. 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
Boston  and  New  York 


THE 

EGYPTIAN  CONCEPTION 

OF   IMMORTALITY 


Clie  llngewoll  JLetture,  i9ti 

THE  EGYPTIAN 

CONCEPTION  OF 

IMMORTALITY 

BY 

GEORGE  ANDREW  REISNER 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 


r  :r^4 


COPYRIGHT,   191 2,  BY  GEORGE   ANDREW  REISNER 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 

Published  February  zqii 


•    ^^'^  o    I 


THE   INGERSOLL  LEC- 
TURESHIP 

Extract  from  the  will  of  Miss  Caroline 

Haskell  Ingersolly  who  died  in 

KeenCy  County  of  Cheshire^ 

New  Hampshire,  Jan. 

26,  1893. 

First.  In  carrying  out  the  wishes  of 
my  late  beloved  father,  George  Gold- 
thwait  Ingersoll,  as  declared  by  him  in  his 
last  will  and  testament,  I  give  and  be- 
queath to  Harvard  University  in  Cam- 
bridge, Mass.,  where  my  late  father  was 
graduated,  and  which  he  always  held  in 
love  and  honor,  the  sum  of  Five  thousand 


242312 


vi  NOTE 

dollars  (;? 5,000)  as  a  fund  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  Lectureship  on  a  plan  some- 
what similar  to  that  of  the  Dudleian  lecture, 
that  is  —  one  lecture  to  be  delivered  each 
year,  on  any  convenient  day  between  the 
last  day  of  May  and  the  first  day  of  De- 
cember, on  this  subject,  "  the  Immortality 
of  Man,"  said  lecture  not  to  form  a  part 
of  the  usual  college  course,  nor  to  be  de- 
livered by  any  Professor  or  Tutor  as  part  of 
his  usual  routine  of  instruction,  though  any 
such  Professor  or  Tutor  may  be  appointed 
to  such  service.  The  choice  of  said  lecturer 
is  not  to  be  limited  to  any  one  religious  de- 
nomination, nor  to  any  one  profession,  but 
may  be  that  of  either  clergyman  or  layman, 
the  appointment  to  take  place  at  least  six 
months  before  the  delivery  of  said  lecture. 
The  above  sum  to  be  safely  invested  and 
three  fourths  of  the  annual  interest  thereof 
to  be  paid  to  the  lecturer  for  his  services 


NOTE  vii 

and  the  remaining  fourth  to  be  expended 
in  the  publishment  and  gratuitous  distri- 
bution of  the  lecture,  a  copy  of  which  is 
always  to  be  furnished  by  the  lecturer  for 
such  purpose.  The  same  lecture  to  be 
named  and  known  as  "  the  Ingersoll  lecture 
on  the  Immortality  of  Man." 


CONTENTS 

I.   Introduction  i 

II.    Sources  of  the  Material  7 

III.  The  Ideas  of  the  Primitive  Race  9 

IV.  The  Early  Dynastic  Period  15 
V.    The  Old  Empire  ai 

VI.    The  Middle  Empire  46 

VII.    The  New  Empire  58 

VIII.   The  Ptolemaic-Roman  Period  69 

IX.    Summary  75 


The 

Egyptian   Conception 

of  Immortality 


I.  INTRODUCTION 

OF  the  nations  which  have  con- 
tributed to  the  direct  stream 
of  civilization,  Egypt  and 
Mesopotamia  are  at  present  believed 
to  be  the  oldest.  The  chronological 
dispute  as  to  the  relative  antiquity  of 
the  two  countries  is  of  minor  import- 
ance; for  while  in  Babylonia  the  his- 
torical material  is  almost  entirely  in- 


2     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

scriptional,  in  Egypt  we  know  the 
handicrafts,  the  weapons,  the  arts,  and, 
to  a  certain  extent,  the  religious  be- 
liefs of  the  race  up  to  a  period  when 
it  was  just  emerging  from  the  Stone 
Age.  In  a  word,  Egypt  presents  the 
most  ancient  race  whose  manner  of  life 
is  known  to  man.  From  the  beginning 
of  its  history  —  that  is,  from  about 
4500  B.C.  —  we  can  trace  the  devel- 
opment of  a  religion  one  of  whose 
most  prominent  elements  was  a  pro- 
mise of  a  life  after  death.  It  was  still  a 
great  religion  when  the  Christian  doc- 
trine of  immortality  was  enunciated.  In 
the  early  centuries  of  the  Christian  era, 
it  seemed  almost  possible  that  the 
worship  of  Osiris  and  Isis  might  be- 
come the  religion  of  the  classical  world ; 
and  the  last  stand  made  by  civilized 


OF   IMMORTALITY  3 

paganism  against  Christianity  was  in 
the  temple  of  Isis  at  Philae  in  the  sixth 
century  after  Christ. 

It  is  clear  that  a  religion  of  such 
duration  must  have  offered  some  of 
those  consolations  to  man  that  have 
marked  all  great  religions,  chief  of 
which  is  the  faith  in  a  spirit,  in  some- 
thing that  preserves  the  personality  of 
the  man  and  does  not  perish  with  the 
body.  This  faith  was,  in  fact,  one  of 
the  chief  elements  in  the  Egyptian 
religion,  —  the  element  best  known 
to  us  through  the  endless  cemeteries 
which  fill  the  desert  from  one  end  of 
Egypt  to  the  other,  and  through  the 
funerary  inscriptions. 

It  is  necessary,  however,  to  correct 
the  prevailing  impression  that  religion 
played  the  greatest  part  in  Egyptian 


4     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

life  or  even  a  greater  part  than  it  does 
in  Moslem  Egypt.  The  mistaken  be- 
lief that  death  and  the  well-being  of 
the  dead  overshadowed  the  existence 
of  the  living,  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the 
physical  character  of  the  country  has 
preserved  for  us  the  cemeteries  and 
the  funerary  temples  better  than  all  the 
other  monuments.  The  narrow  strip 
of  fat  black  land  along  the  Nile  pro- 
duces generally  its  three  crops  a  year. 
It  is  much  too  valuable  to  use  as  a 
cemetery.  But  more  than  that,  it  is 
subject  to  periodic  saturation  with 
water  during  the  inundation,  and  is, 
therefore,  unsuitable  for  the  burials  of 
a  nation  which  wished  to  preserve  the 
contents  of  the  graves.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  desert,  which  bounds  this 
fertile  strip  so  closely  that  a  dozen 


OF   IMMORTALITY  5 

steps  will  usually  carry  one  from  the 
black  land  to  the  grey,  —  the  desert 
offers  a  dry  preserving  soil  with  ab- 
solutely no  value  to  the  living.  Thus, 
all  the  funerary  monuments  were 
erected  on  the  desert,  and  except 
where  intentionally  destroyed  they  are 
preserved  to  the  present  day.  The  pal- 
aces, the  towns,  the  farms,  and  many 
of  the  great  temples  which  were  erect- 
ed on  the  black  soil,  have  been  pulled 
down  for  building  material  or  buried 
deep  under  the  steadily  rising  deposits 
of  the  Nile.  The  tombs  of  six  thou- 
sand years  of  dead  have  accumulated 
on  the  desert  edge. 

Moreover,  our  impression  of  these 
tombs  has  been  formed  from  the  monu- 
ments erected  by  kings,  princes,  priests, 
and  the  great  and  wealthy  men  of  the 


6     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

kingdom.  The  multitude  of  plain  una- 
dorned burial-places  which  the  scientific 
excavator  records  by  thousands  have 
escaped  the  attention  of  scholars  inter- 
ested in  Egypt  from  the  point  of  view 
of  a  comparison  of  religions.  It  has  also 
been  overlooked  that  the  strikingly  col- 
ored mummies  and  the  glaring  burial 
apparatus  of  the  late  period  cost  very 
little  to  prepare.  The  manufacture  of 
mummies  was  a  regular  trade  in  the 
Ptolemaic  period  at  least.  Mummy 
cases  were  prepared  in  advance  with 
blank  spaces  for  the  names.  I  do  not 
think  that  any  more  expense  was  in- 
curred in  Egyptian  funerals  in  the  dy- 
nastic period  than  is  the  case  among 
the  modern  Egyptians.  The  import- 
ance of  the  funerary  rites  to  the  living 
must,  therefore,  not  be  exaggerated. 


OF   IMMORTALITY  7 

II.  SOURCES    OF   THE    MATERIAL 

With  the  exception  of  certain  myth- 
ological explanations  supplied  by  the 
inscriptions  and  reliefs  in  the  temples, 
our  knowledge  of  Egyptian  ideas  in 
regard  to  the  future  life  is  based  on 
funerary  customs  as  revealed  by  exca- 
vation and  on  the  funerary  texts  found 
in  the  tombs.  These  tombs  always  show 
the  same  essential  functions  through 
all  changes  of  form,  —  the  protection 
of  the  burial  against  decay  and  spolia- 
tion, and  the  provision  of  a  meeting- 
place  where  the  living  may  bring  offer- 
ings to  the  dead.  Correspondingly, 
there  are  two  sets  of  customs,  —  burial 
customs  and  offering  customs.  The 
texts  follow  the  same  division.  For  the 
offering  place,  the  texts  are  magical 


8     EGYPTIAN  CONCEPTION 

formulas  which,  properly  recited  by 
the  living,  provide  material  benefit  for 
the  dead.  For  the  burial  place,  the 
texts  are  magical  formulas  to  be  used 
by  the  spirit  for  its  own  benefit  in  the 
difficulties  of  the  spirit  life.  These  texts 
from  the  burial  chambers  are  found  in 
only  a  few  graves, — those  of  the  very 
great, — and  their  contents  show  us 
that  they  were  intended  only  for  people 
whose  earthly  position  was  exceptional. 
From  the  funerary  customs  and  the 
offering  texts,  a  clear  view  is  obtained 
of  the  general  conception,  the  ordi- 
nary practice.  We  see  what  was  re- 
garded as  absolutely  essential  to  the 
belief  of  the  common  man.  From  the 
texts  found  in  the  burial  chambers  we 
get  the  point  of  view  of  the  educated 
or  powerful  man,  the  things  that  might 


OF   IMMORTALITY  9 

be  done  to  gain  for  him  an  exceptional 
place  in  the  other  world.  Both  of  these 
classes  of  material  must  be  considered, 
in  order  to  gain  a  true  idea  of  the  prac- 
tical beliefs.  For  it  must  be  emphasized 
from  the  beginning  that  we  have  in 
Egypt  several  apparently  conflicting 
conceptions  of  immortality.  Nor  are 
we  anywhere  near  obtaining  in  the  case 
of  the  texts  the  cleamess  necessary  to 
understand  fully  all  the  differing  views 
held  by  the  priestly  classes  during  a 
period  of  over  two  thousand  years. 

III.  THE  IDEAS  OF  THE  PRIMITIVE 
RACE 

The  earliest  belief  in  immortality  is 
that  which  is  shown  to  us  by  the  burial 
customs  of  the  primitive  race,  —  the 
prehistoric  Egyptian  race. 


10    EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

About  4500  B.C.  we  find  the  Egypt- 
ian race  was  just  emerging  from  the 
Stone  Age.  All  the  implements  and 
weapons  found  are  of  flint  or  other 
stone.  The  men  of  that  time  were  ig- 
norant of  writing,  but  show  a  certain 
facility  in  line  drawings  of  men,  plants, 
and  animals.  We  have  found  thou- 
sands of  their  graves  which  all  show 
the  same  idea  of  death.  Each  person 
^was  buried  with  implements,  weapons, 
and  ornaments, — no  doubt  those  actu- 
ally used  in  life,  —  with  a  full  outfit 
of  household  pots  and  pans,  and  with 
a  supply  of  food.  The  man  was  dead, 
but  he  still  needed  the  same  things  he 
used  in  ordinary  life.  By  a  fortunate 
chance  we  have  even  recovered  bodies 
accidentally  dessicated  and  preserved 
intact  in  the  dry  soil.   These  bodies 


OF   IMMORTALITY  ii 

do  not  show  any  trace  of  mutilation, 
mummification,  or  any  other  prepara- 
tion for  the  grave  except  probably 
washing.  The  dead  body  was  simply 
laid  on  a  mat  in  the  grave,  covered  with 
a  cloth  and  a  mat  or  a  skin,  and  then 
with  clean  gravel.  But  with  it  was 
placed  all  those  things  which  the  man 
might  need  if  his  life  were  to  go  on  in 
some  mysterious,  unseen  way,  as  life 
went  on  among  those  on  earth.  Pos- 
sibly his  relations  as  in  later  times 
brought  offerings  of  food  to  the  grave, 
but  here  even  the  dry  soil  of  Egypt 
fails  to  furnish  positive  evidence.  All 
this  shows  a  plain  simple  belief  in  the 
persistence  of  the  life  of  a  man  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  body — a  belief 
widely  prevalent  among  primitive 
people.   It  contains  nothing  unusual, 


12     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

and  is  probably  perfectly  explicable 
psychologically  by  means  of  dreams. 

There  is  little  or  no  change  in  this 
underlying  belief  to  be  observed  in 
the  burial  customs  of  the  Egyptians 
during  the  late  predynastic  period. 
Copper  weapons  and  implements  suc- 
ceed stone  in  the  graves.  All  those 
objects  in  whose  manufacture  the  new 
tools  are  used  show  changes  of  tech- 
nique and  form.  It  is  even  curious  to 
note  that  some  of  the  older  stone  and 
flint  objects,  some  of  the  older  pots 
and  pans,  are  still  made  as  a  matter 
of  tradition.  The  importance  of  this 
is  not  to  be  overlooked.  For  centuries 
men  had  used  flint  knives  and  they 
had  baked  their  bread  in  flat  mud 
saucers  set  in  the  ashes.  For  centuries 
these  flint  knives  and  these  cakes  with 


OF   IMMORTALITY  13 

their  saucers  had  been  placed  in  the 
graves.  Gradually  metal  knives  and 
better  bread  pans  displaced  these  more 
primitive  objects  in  daily  life ;  but  the 
older  primitive  objects  were  still  placed 
in  the  graves  as  a  matter  of  tradition. 

It  must  be  remembered,  of  course, 
that  these  traditional  objects  were  also 
in  use  in  ancient  traditional  ceremonies 
on  earth.  The  sacrificial  animals  were 
still  slaughtered  with  flint  knives.  The 
old-style  cakes  were  still  offered  in 
the  holy  places.  In  other  words,  life  on 
earth  now  consisted  of  ordinary  material 
life  and  a  traditional  life  —  a  life  that 
clung  to  the  forms  of  a  more  primitive 
civilization  as  somehow  more  effective 
with  the  divine  powers.  This  view  is 
closely  reflected  in  the  grave  furniture; 
here,  too,  were  the  practical  objects 


14     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

and  the  traditional  ceremonial  objects. 
Life  after  death  is  still  always  the  same 
as  life  on  earth  —  with  the  same  phys- 
ical needs,  with  the  same  need  of  help 
from  supernatural  powers  or  against 
supernatural  powers.  The  spirit  of  the 
man  needed  the  spirit  of  the  copper 
axe  to  swing  in  battle;  but  just  as  much 
he  needed  the  spirit  of  the  flint  knife 
to  make  the  first  cut  across  the  throat 
of  the  spirit  bull  of  sacrifice.  Remem- 
ber this  —  the  other  world,  in  which 
lived  the  spirit  of  the  dead,  was  filled 
with  the  spirits  or  ghosts  of  all  things 
and  animals.  The  other,  the  unseen,  was 
a  duplicate  of  this  world;  all  things 
which  have  shape  were  there — even  to 
the  black  fields  and  the  broad  river  of 
Egypt.  This  is  the  foundation  of  the 
Egyptian  conception  of  immortality. 


OF   IMMORTALITY  15 

Through  all  the  modifications  and  ac- 
cretions of  the  following  three  thou- 
sand years,  this  foundation  idea  is  al- 
ways clearly  visible.  All  the  statues, 
the  carved  and  painted  tombs,  all  the 
curious  little  model  boats  and  work- 
shops, all  the  painted  mummies,  all 
the  amulets,  the  scarabs,  the  little  fu- 
nerary statuettes,  —  all  this  mummery 
which  seems  to  be  so  characteristic 
and  so  essential,  is  only  the  means  to 
an  end,  and  an  ever  changing  means  to  ^ 
secure  a  successful  comfortable  exist- 
ence of  the  spirit  in  the  life  after  death,  | 
—  in  the  ghostly  duplicate  of  life  on 
earth. 

IV.  THE   EARLY   DYNASTIC   PERIOD 

It  is  clear  that  the  effort  to  attain  an 
immortality  which  is  merely  a  ghostly 


1 6     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

continuation  of  life  on  earth  must  re- 
flect the  general  development  of  Egypt- 
ian culture,  —  especially  the  advance 
in  arts  and  crafts.  One  of  the  most 
striking  examples  of  this  fact  is  the 
introduction  of  metal  working  men- 
tioned above  and  the  consequent  plac- 
ing of  both  flint  and  copper  in  the 
grave,  —  the  division  of  grave  furni- 
ture into  practical  objects  and  cere- 
monial objects,  which  is  the  founda- 
tion for  the  use  of  symbolic  objects 
in  later  times. 

The  advance  in  arts  and  crafts  not 
only  suggests  new  ideas  of  the  neces- 
sities of  the  spirit,  but  it  provides  the 
necessary  technical  skill  for  the  more 
effective  satisfaction  of  all  the  needs 
of  the  dead.  This  takes,  first  of  all, 
the  form  of  supplying  a  place  for  the 


OF  IMMORTALITY         17 

burial,  which  furnishes  greater  security 
to  the  body  and  a  better  communica- 
tion between  the  living  and  the  dead. 
From  the  First  Dynasty,  say  from 
3300  B.C.  down,  as  soon  as  the  Egypt- 
ian had  mastered  the  use  of  mud-brick 
and  wood,  we  gain  the  certainty  of  an 
idea  which  could  only  be  guessed  at 
in  the  primitive  period.  A  place  is 
provided  above  the  grave  at  which  the 
living  could  meet  the  spirit  of  the  dead 
with  periodical  offerings  of  food  and 
other  necessities.  In  the  life  after  death, 
spirit  food  and  drink,  once  used,  ceased 
to  be,  just  as  in  life  on  earth,  and  had 
to  be  renewed  from  day  to  day,  lest 
the  spirit  of  the  dead  suffer  from  hun- 
ger and  thirst.  One  of  the  great  devel- 
opments of  the  first  six  dynasties 
looked  to  the  provision  of  these  daily 
necessities. 


i8     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

The  invention  of  writing  was  im- 
mediately utilized.  About  the  begin- 
ning of  the  First  Dynasty  writing  was 
invented  for  administrative  and  other 
practical  purposes.  Gravestones,  bear- 
ing in  reHef  the  name  of  the  dead, 
were  set  up  in  the  offering  places  of 
the  kings  and  court  people.  These  were 
probably  reminders  for  use  in  some 
simple  formula  recited  in  presenting 
the  periodical  offerings.  As  the  Egypt- 
ians became  more  familiar  with  the 
use  of  writing,  the  offering  formula 
was  written  out  in  full,  enlarged  and 
modified. 

Sculptures,  both  relief  and  statuary, 
in  every  stage  of  their  development, 
were  used  as  magical  accessories  to 
the  offering  rites. 

So,  also,  the  whole  history  of  Egypt- 


OF   IMMORTALITY  19 

ian  architecture  was  reflected  in  the 
tomb;  for  every  advance  brought 
about  some  change  in  the  form  or 
structure.  In  fact,  the  whole  develop- 
ment of  the  form  of  the  Egyptian  tomb 
depended  on  the  development  of  tech- 
nical skill.  The  same  funerary  func- 
tions are  served  throughout.  As  all  the 
great  artisans  were  at  the  command 
of  the  king,  all  the  great  technical  dis- 
coveries and  inventions  were  first  made 
in  his  service.  But  every  permanent 
gain  in  knowledge  was  a  benefit  to 
the  race  and  utilized  by  the  common 
people.  So,  for  example,  the  skill  ac- 
quired in  stone-cutting,  during  the  con- 
struction of  the  great  pyramids,  was 
utilized  a  little  later  in  producing  rock- 
cut  tombs  from  one  end  of  Egypt  to 
the  other. 


20     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

The  functions  of  the  grave  remained 
the  same.  Yet  with  the  changes  in 
form  resulting  from  the  growth  of 
skill,  modifications  in  the  funerary  cus- 
toms crept  in. 

The  mud-brick  tombs  of  the  early 
part  of  the  First  Dynasty,  like  the  pre- 
dynastic  graves,  had  only  one  cham- 
ber, limited  in  size  by  the  length  of 
logs  obtainable  to  form  the  roof  The 
growing  desire  for  ostentation  found  a 
way  to  enlarge  the  tombs  by  building 
them  with  a  number  of  chambers.  The 
burial  was  placed  in  the  central  cham- 
ber and  the  burial  furniture  in  the 
additional  chambers.  In  this  way  the 
separation  of  the  furniture  and  the  act- 
ual burial  was  brought  about. 


OF   IMMORTALITY  21 

V.  THE  OLD  EMPIRE 

Another  change  comes  in  the  Fourth 
Dynasty,  and  is  to  be  noted  first  in  the 
royal  tombs,  as  is  always  the  case.  The 
Egyptians  had  now  learned  to  cut 
stone  and  build  with  it.  The  burial 
chambers  hollowed  in  the  solid  rock 
were  necessarily  smaller  than  the  old 
chambers  dug  in  the  gravel  and  no 
longer  sufficient  to  contain  the  great 
mass  of  furniture  gathered  by  a  king 
for  his  grave.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
chapels  with  the  increase  in  architect- 
ural skill  could  be  built  of  great  size. 
Corresponding  to  these  technical  con- 
ditions we  find  a  great  increase  in  the 
importance  of  the  chapel.  It  becomes 
a  great  temple,  whose  magazines  were 
filled  with  all  those  objects  which  had 


22     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

formerly  been  placed  in  the  burial 
chamber  and  were  so  necessary  to  the 
life  of  the  spirit.  The  temples  of  the 
third  pyramid,  for  example,  contained 
nearly  two  thousand  stone  vessels. 
Great  estates  were  set  aside  by  will, 
and  the  income  appointed  to  the  sup- 
port of  certain  persons  who  on  their 
side  were  obliged  to  keep  up  the  tem- 
ple, to  make  the  offerings  and  to  re- 
cite the  magical  formulas  which  would 
provide  the  spirit  with  all  its  necessi- 
ties. 

Following  closely  the  growth  in  im- 
portance of  the  royal  chapels,  the  pri- 
vate offering  places  assumed  a  greater 
importance.  The  custom  of  periodic 
offerings  and  the  use  of  magical  texts 
grew  until  it  reached  its  highest  point 
in  the  Fifth  Dynasty.  At  this  time  there 


OF   IMMORTALITY         23 

is  a  burial  chamber  deep  underground 
where  the  dead  was  laid  securely  in  the 
ancient  traditional  attitude,  with  his 
clothing  and  a  few  personal  ornaments. 
As  a  rule  it  is  only  the  women,  always 
conservative,  that  have  anything  more. 
Above  this  grave,  there  is  a  solid  rec- 
tangular structure,  with  a  chapel  or 
offering  place  on  the  side  towards  the 
valley.  The  offering  place  is  always 
there,  no  matter  how  poor  or  small  the 
tomb.  But  to  understand  just  what  the 
Egyptian  thought,  we  must  turn  to 
the  better  tombs.  The  walls  are  of 
limestone  carved  with  reliefs  represent- 
ing the  important  processes  of  daily 
life,  —  sowing,  reaping,  cattle-herding, 
hunting,  pot-making,  weaving,  —  all 
those  actions  which  furnish  the  daily 
supplies.  The  dead  man  is  represented 


24    EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

overseeing  all  this.  Finally,  near  the 
offering  niche,  he  is  represented  seated, 
usually  with  his  wife  at  a  table  bear- 
ing loaves  of  the  traditional  ta  bread. 
Beside  him  are  represented  heaps  of 
provisions  —  meat,  cakes,  vegetables, 
wine  and  beer.  A  list  of  objects  is  never 
missing,  marked  with  numbers,  —  a 
thousand  loaves  of  bread,  a  thousand 
head  of  cattle,  a  thousand  jars  of  wine, 
a  thousand  garments,  and  so  on.  We 
know  from  later  inscriptions  that  these 
words,  properly  recited,  created  for  the 
spirit  a  store  of  spirit  objects  in  equal 
numbers.  Below  the  niche  is  an  altar 
for  receiving  actual  offerings  of  food 
and  drink.  It  is  clear  that  the  living, 
coming  to  this  offering  place  with  or 
without  material  offerings,  could,  by 
proper  recitation,  secure  to  the  spirit 


OF   IMMORTALITY  25 

of  the  dead  all  its  daily  needs.  This 
offering  niche  is  the  door  of  the  other 
world  —  symbolically  and  actually.  In 
many  graves  the  niche  is  carved  to 
represent  a  door  —  sometimes  opening 
in,  and  sometimes  opening  out.  More- 
over, in  several  cases  the  figure  of  the 
dead  is  carved  half  emerging  from  the 
opening  door  —  a  figure  in  all  ways 
like  the  figure  of  the  dead  as  he  is 
represented  in  the  scenes  from  life. 
Beyond  this  door  lives  the  spirit  of 
the  dead. 

In  many  offering  chambers  there  is 
a  small  hole  in  the  wall,  either  in  the 
offering  niche  or  in  another  place.  If 
this  hole  be  properly  lighted  and  the 
space  beyond  has  not  been  changed  by 
decay  or  violation,  the  light  falls  on  the 
face  of  a  statue  of  the  dead  looking 


26     EGYPTIAN    CONCEPTION 

forth  to  the  world  of  the  living.  For  be- 
hind the  wall  is  another  chamber,  closed 
except  for  this  small  hole.  This  hid- 
den chamber  contains  statues  of  the 
dead  often  accompanied  by  statues  of 
his  family  and  his  servants.  These  stat- 
ues of  the  dead  are  labeled  with  his 
name,  and  are  said  to  be  the  abode  of 
his  spirit,  his  ka,  as  the  Egyptians  called 
it.  Moreover,  all  the  offering  formulas 
name  the  ka  as  the  recipient  of  the  food 
and  drink.  The  duplicate  spirit  of  the 
man  is  his  ka.  In  these  statues  we  have, 
then,  a  simulacrum  of  the  man  pro- 
vided for  the  use  of  his  ka  —  perhaps 
to  assist  the  ka  to  the  persistence  of  his 
earthly  form,  and  to  the  remembrance 
of  his  name.  But  what  were  the  uses 
of  the  subsidiary  statues?  What  spirit 
resided  in  them*?  The  man's  son  in 


OF   IMMORTALITY  27 

his  turn  died,  and  a  similar  room  was 
made  for  him  with  his  statue  and  his 
subsidiary  statues.  Did  his  ka  live  both 
in  the  statue  placed  with  his  father's 
statue  and  also  in  the  statue  in  his  own 
grave "?  We  have  no  answer.  Prob- 
ably the  Egyptian  mind  never  formu- 
lated the  difficulty. 

But  the  new  idea  is  clearly  expressed. 
It  is  no  longer  necessary  to  fill  the  burial 
chamber  with  a  mass  of  household  fur- 
niture for  the  use  of  the  dead.  All  these 
things  can  be  carved  on  the  wall  of  the 
burial  chamber  and  so  made  effective 
for  his  use.  It  was  in  any  case  necessary 
to  supply  his  food  by  means  of  the 
offerings,  and  it  was  quite  as  easy  to 
supply  all  his  other  necessities  in  the 
same  way.  In  other  words,  there  is  a 
distinct  growth  in  the  use  of  magic  to 


28     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

benefit  the  dead.  At  the  same  time,  we 
find  the  growth  of  the  custom  of  sup- 
plying a  special  abode  for  the  ka  —  a 
simulacrum  of  the  man,  which  assisted 
the  ka  to  retain  the  form  of  the  living 
man  and  to  remember  his  identity. 

The  tendency  of  this  period  is  then 
to  place  a  greater  dependence  on  magic 
than  on  food,  drink,  and  grave  furni- 
ture. It  is,  therefore,  not  surprising  to 
find  introduced,  for  the  first  time,  the 
use  of  magical  texts  in  the  burial  cham- 
ber,—  the  so-called  Pyramid  Texts. 
In  the  burial  chamber  in  the  pyramid 
of  Unas,  last  king  of  the  Fifth  Dynasty, 
and  in  'the  pyramids  of  the  kings  of 
the  Sixth  Dynasty,  the  walls  are  cov- 
ered with  long  magical  texts  or  chap- 
ters—  the  oldest  form  of  the  so-called 
book  of  the  dead  or   "book  of  the 


OF   IMMORTALITY         29 

going  forth  by  day."  The  texts  were 
probably  somewhat  older,  but  are  now 
used  for  the  first  time  in  this  man- 
ner, no  doubt  owing  to  the  increased 
facility  in  carving  stone.  In  these  the 
various  powers  of  the  other  world  are 
invoked  by  the  incidents  of  the  Osiris- 
Isis  legend,  to  preserve  the  dead  body, 
to  feed  the  ka^  and  to  assist  the  other 
spirit,  the  ba^  in  its  struggles  with  su- 
pernatural powers. 

The  pyramid  texts  introduce  us  to 
three  important  ideas, —  (1)  a  curious 
plurality  of  the  spirit  existence,  (2)  a 
condition  of  immortality  better  than 
that  of  the  old  underworld  or  Earu,  and 
(3)  most  important  of  all,  the  identi- 
fication of  the  king  with  Osiris  ac- 
cording to  the  terms  of  the  Osiris-Isis 
legend. 


30     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

In  all  the  older  offering  formulas  it 
is  only  the  ka  spirit  which  is  mentioned. 
Here  is  the  body  perishable  and  de- 
structible ;  here  is  the  life,  the  ka  which 
fills  every  limb  and  vessel  of  the  body 
and  must,  therefore,  have  the  same 
form.  When  death  comes,  the  ka  spirit, 
the  image  of  the  man,  remains  near  the 
body,  and  this  spirit  it  was  which  was 
the  object  of  the  rites  and  offerings  in 
the  funerary  chapel.  But  besides  this 
ka,  it  appears  for  the  first  time  that  the 
king  at  any  rate  possesses  also  a  soul 
called  a  ba.  In  later  times  we  see  that 
every  man  possessed  a  ba,  and  we  learn 
that  each  god  possessed  several  bas. 
But  it  is  in  the  pyramid  texts  that  we 
learn  for  the  first  time  of  the  ba  of  a 
man,  and  that  man  is  a  king.  When 
death  comes,  the  ba  takes  flight  in  the 


OF   IMMORTALITY         31 

form  of  a  bird  or  whatever  form  it  wills. 
All  seems  confused.  The  ka  was  near 
the  body,  the  ka  was  in  the  field  of 
Earu,  under  the  earth  ploughing  and 
sowing;  the  ba  is  fluttering  on  the 
branches  of  the  tree  on  earth,  the  ba  has 
fled  like  a  falcon  to  the  heavens,  and 
has  been  set  as  a  star  among  the  stars. 
The  dead  king  lives  with  the  gods  and 
is  fed  by  them.  The  goddesses  give 
him  the  breast.  He  lives  in  the  Island 
of  Food.  He  lives  in  Earu,  the  Un- 
derworld, a  land  like  Egypt,  with  fields 
and  canals  and  flood  and  harvest.  He 
shares  with  the  gods  in  the  offerings 
made  in  the  great  temples  on  earth. 

It  is  quite  clear  that  all  this  is  an 
expression  of  dissatisfaction  with  the 
old  belief  in  the  simple  duplicate 
world,  the  world  of  Earu  under  the 


32     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

earth.  It  is  noteworthy  that  this 
first  appears  in  royal  tombs.  These 
texts  are  written  for  kings  alone.  It  is 
only  many  centuries  later  that  the 
texts  of  the  book  of  the  dead  showed 
similar  possibilities  open  to  the  com- 
mon man.  This  is  the  usual  course  of 
all  advances  in  Egypt,  — architecture, 
sculpture,  writing,  whatever  gain  in 
skill  or  knowledge  there  is,  appears 
first  in  the  service  of  the  royal  family. 
Thus,  even  in  the  conception  of  im- 
mortality, the  new  ideas,  the  better 
immortality  was  first  thought  out  for 
the  benefit  of  the  king.  The  basis 
for  this  lay  simply  in  the  life  on 
earth.  The  king  had  come  early  to 
have  a  sort  of  divinity  ascribed  to  him. 
His  chief  name  was  the  Horus  name. 
Menes  was  the  Horus  Aha ;  Cheops 


OF   IMMORTALITY  33 

was  the  Horus  Mejeru ;  Pepy  I^I  was 
the  Horus  Netery-khau.  But  he  was 
also  the  son  of  Ra,the  sun-god,  endued 
with  life  forever.  The  king  was  a  god, 
and  it  could  only  be  that  in  his  future 
life  he  shared  the  life  of  the  gods. 
Thus,  all  is  no  more  confused  or  mys- 
terious than  is  the  conception  of  the 
life  of  the  gods  themselves. 

But  the  texts  go  even  further  than 
this  and  identify  the  dead  god-man,  who 
as  Horus  was  king  on  earth,  with  the 
father  of  Horus,  the  dead  god  of  the 
earth,  Osiris.  This  identification  of  the 
dead  man  with  the  dead  god  Osiris  was 
later  enlarged  to  include  all  men,  and 
became  in  the  Ptolemaic  period  the 
most  characteristic  feature  of  the  Egypt- 
ian conception  of  life  after  death. 

The  Osiris  story  as  it  can  be  pieced 


34     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

together  from  the  pyramid  texts '  was 
briefly  thus :  Keb,  the  earth-god,  and 
Nut,  the  goddess  of  the  sky,  had  four 
children,  —  Osiris  and  Isis,  Seth  and 
Nephthys,  —  who  were  thus  paired  in 
marriage.  Keb  gave  Osiris  his  do- 
minion, the  earth,  and  made  him  the 
god  of  the  earth,  and  he  ruled  justly 
and  powerfully.  Seth,  his  brother,  was 
jealous,  and  by  treachery  enticed  Osiris 
into  a  box,  which  he  closed  and  threw 
into  the  water.  Isis  sought  for  the 
body  of  her  husband  until  she  found 
it,  and  Isis  and  Nephthys,  her  sister, 
sat  at  his  head  and  feet  and  bewailed 
him.  Re,  the  greatest  of  the  gods, 
heard  Isis's  complaint ;  his  heart  was 
touched,  and  he  sent  Anubis  to  bury 

'  See  A.  Erinan  :  Die  Jegyptische  Religion, 
p.  38  ff. 


OF   IMMORTALITY         35 

Osiris.  Anubis  re-joined  his  separated 
bones,  bound  him  with  cloths,  and 
prepared  him  for  burial,  —  that  is, 
mummified  him.  This  is  the  form  in 
which  Osiris  is  represented, —  as  a 
mummy.  Isi^  then  fanned  her  wings, 
and  the  air  from  her  wings  caused  the 
mummy  to  live.  His  life  on  earth, 
however,  was  over,  could  not  be  re- 
called, so  that  his  new  life  could  only 
be  passed  in  the  other  world,  the  world 
of  the  dead.  Here  Osiris  became  king, 
as  he  had  been  king  on  earth.  Butlsis 
conceived  from  the  dead-living  Osiris, 
bore  a  child  in  secret,  and  suckled  him, 
hidden  in  a  swamp.  When  the  child, 
the  sun-god  Horus,  grew  up,  he  fought 
against  Seth  to  recover  his  father's 
kingdom,  and  to  avenge  his  death. 
Both  gods  were  injured  in  the  fight. 


36     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

Horns  lost  an  eye.  But  Thoth  inter- 
vened, separated  the  fighters,  and 
healed  their  wounds.  Thoth  spat  upon 
the  eye  of  Horus  and  it  became  whole. 
Horus,  however,  gave  his  eye  to  Osiris 
to  eat,  and  thereby  Osiris  became  en- 
dowed with  life,  soul,  and  power  (i.e. 
in  the  underworld).  But  Seth  disputed 
the  legitimacy  of  the  birth  of  Horus, 
and  the  great  gods  held  a  court  in  the 
house  of  Keb.  In  this  court,  justice 
was  done,  the  truth  of  Horus's  claims 
was  established,  and  he  was  placed  on 
the  throne  of  his  father.  Osiris  became 
the  ruler  in  the  land  of  the  dead,  Horus 
in  the  land  of  the  living. 

The  kernel  of  the  story  appears  to 
be  this:  Osiris  is  the  god  of  earth,  and 
his  life  iS  the  life  of  the  vegetation, 
dying  and  reviving  with  the  course  of 


OF   IMMORTALITY  39 

of  broad-headed  people  from  the  north. 
In  the  Old  Empire,  this  broad-headed 
people  had  become  predominant,  and 
remain  so  throughout  all  Lower  and 
Middle  Egypt  until  the  present  day. 
This  intruding  race,  whose  advent 
marks  the  beginning  of  Egyptian  civ- 
ilization, I  believe  to  have  been  Semitic. 
Remember  this  —  the  texts  show 
clearly  older  ideas  in  conflict  with  the 
Osiris  belief  The  primitive  race  was 
not,  I  believe,  a  race  of  Osiris  followers. 
Professor  Erman  has  stated  that  the 
Osiris  belief  is  as  early  as  4200  b.c. 
That  I  am  certain  is  absolutely  un- 
tenable. It  is  a  question  of  Egyptian 
chronology  in  which  I  beg  to  differ 
radically  both  from  Eduard  Meyer 
and  Professor  Erman.  In  the  formal 
calendar  year  of  three  hundred  and 


40     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

sixty-five  days,  there  are  twelve 
months  of  thirty  days  and  five  inter- 
calary days.  These  intercalary  days 
are  called  the  birthdays  of  Osiris, 
Horus,  Seth,  Isis,  and  Nephthys — the 
five  most  important  figures  in  the 
Osiris  myth.  According  to  Professor 
Meyer  and  Professor  Erman,  this  formal 
calendar  was  introduced  in4200B.c., 
one  of  the  occasions  when  the  heli- 
acal rising  of  the  star  Sothis  fell  on 
the  first  of  the  month  Thoth  of  the 
calendar.  However,  if  we  accept  with 
them  the  date  3300  b.c.  as  the  date  of 
the  First  Dynasty,  then  in  4200  b.c 
the  Egyptians  were  just  emerging  from 
a  neolithic  state.  They  were  culturally 
incapable  of  making  a  formal  calendar 
and  could  have  no  possible  use  for  one. 
Either  the  calendar  did  not  originate 


OF   IMMORTALITY         41 

in  Egypt,  or  it  was  introduced  in 
2780  B.C.,  when  again  the  heliacal  rising 
Sothis  fell  on  the  first  of  Thoth.  At 
this  time  the  Osiris  story  was  dominant, 
in  the  religion.  We  have  a  race  almost 
certainly  Semitic,  fusing  with  the  prim- 
itive race  during  the  period  3500-3000, 
and  a  few  centuries  later  we  have  anew 
religious  idea  dominating  the  fused 
race.  When  we  examine  this  new 
idea,  the  Osiris  belief,  we  find  its  earliest 
form  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the 
common  Tammuz  or  Adonis  story  of 
the  Semites.  The  conclusion  lies  very 
near  at  hand,  that  the  Osiris  story  is  in 
fact  the  Tammuz  story,  brought  into 
Egypt  by  the  earliest  Semitic  tribes. 
In  any  case  it  was  a  race  with  a  large 
Semitic  mixture  which  utilized  this 
story  in  working  out  a  theory  of  im- 


42     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

mortality;  and  in  all  probability  we 
have  in  the  Osiris-Isis  religion  a  third 
great  religion  due  to  the  Semitic  race. 

However  this  maybe,  it  is  clear  that 
the  craving  of  the  king  for  a  special 
immortality,  for  an  exalted  future  life, 
founditsjustification  through  the  Osiris- 
Isis  myth.  Horus  was  the  successor 
of  Osiris  as  lord  of  the  earth  and  the 
living.  The  kings  of  Egypt  were  the 
successors  of  Horus.  The  chief  name 
of  the  king  was  his  Horus  name; 
Menes  was  the  Horus  Aha,  Cheops 
the  Horus  Mejeru.  When  the  king 
died,  he  became  Osiris,  and  passed  to 
the  kingdom  of  Osiris.  He  passed 
through  the  underworld  with  the  sun- 
god,  abode  there  as  Osiris,  the  god- 
king,  or  sped  to  the  heavens  to  the 


OF   IMMORTALITY         43 

celestial  gods.  Thus  comes  the  entering 
wedge  of  a  great  change  in  the  concep- 
tion of  immortality — an  ordinary  im- 
mortality for  the  common  man,  a  special 
divine  immortality  for  the  divine  man, 
the  king.'  Even  at  this  early  age,  it 
was,  of  course,  clearly  stated  that  the 
king  must  be  righteous,  morally  satis- 
factory in  the  eyes  of  the  world  and  of 
the  gods.  The  gods,  as  always,  were  on 
the  side  of  the  moral  code,  and  espe- 
cially on  the  side  of  the  organized  re- 
ligion. It  is  perhaps  significant  that  the 
chief  sins  of  the  kings  of  the  Fourth 
Dynasty,  so  execrated  by  the  Egypt- 
ian priests  in  the  Ptolemaic  period, 

*  It  appears  probable  that  the  deification  of 
the  king  and  the  assumption  of  a  divine  immor- 
tality for  him  was  prior  in  time  to  the  statement 
of  these  beliefs  in  the  terms  of  the  Osiris  story. 


44     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

were  sins  against  the  great  gods.  The 
other  charges  are  for  the  most  part 
plainly  slanders.  In  practice  every  king 
whose  family  remained  in  power  was 
justified  before  gods  and  men,  and 
took  his  place  among  the  gods  in  the 
islands  of  the  blessed  in  the  northern 
part  of  the  heavens. 

The  dead  body  was  laid  in  the  grave, 
supplied  with  all  these  magic  texts 
which  were  to  restore  and  revive  the 
soul  and  guide  it  across  waters  and 
through  dangers  to  the  place  of  Osiris. 
But  the  chapel  was  not  wanting,  the 
cult  of  the  ka  was  maintained,  the 
statues  were  placed  in  the  hidden  room, 
the  food  and  drink  were  brought  daily 
to  the  door  of  the  grave.  Thus,  while 
a  special  immortality  was  evolved  for 
the  king,  the  funeral  customs  continue 


OF   IMMORTALITY         45 

to  show  the  same  service  of  the  ka  as 
in  the  earlier  period. 

In  the  Sixth  Dynasty,  there  is  a  re- 
turn to  the  older  practice  of  placing 
objects  in  the  grave  itself  At  present 
we  are  unable  to  point  out  the  rea- 
sons for  this.  Possibly  experience  had 
taught  men  that  endowments  and 
carved  walls  left  to  the  care  of  de- 
scendants were  insecure  supports  for 
a  life  after  death  which  was  to  last 
forever.  At  any  rate,  the  custom  arose 
of  making  small  models  in  wood  or 
stone  or  metal  of  those  scenes  and  ob- 
jects which  were  carved  in  relief  on 
the  walls  of  the  chapel,  —  models  of 
houses,  granaries,  of  kitchens,  of  brick- 
yards ;  models  of  herds  and  servants 
and  soldiers;  models  of  boats  and 
ships ;  models  of  dance-halls  with  the 


46     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

man  seated  drinking  wine,  around 
him  musicians,  before  him  dancing 
girls ;  models  of  swords,  of  vessels,  of 
implements.  Poorer  people  must  be 
contented  with  poorer  things,  down  to 
the  peasant  who  is  buried  with  the  few 
little  necessary  pots  and  pans  of  his 
daily  life.  But  always,  in  every  grave, 
the  chapel,  small  or  great,  is  there. 
The  endowment  of  funerary  priests 
continues.  Every  man,  I  suppose,  how- 
ever poor,  had  some  one  to  make  at 
least  one  offering  at  his  grave.  And 
so  it  was  down  to  the  New  Empire. 

VI.  THE  MIDDLE  EMPIRE 

During  the  Middle  Empire,  the 
burial  and  offering  customs  show  the 
persistence  of  the  old  belief  in  life 


OF   IMMORTALITY         47 

after  death  as  on  earth,  Pots,  vessels, 
tools,  weapons,  ornaments,  clothing, 
and  models  of  scenes  from  life,  con- 
tinue to  be  placed  in  the  burial  cham- 
ber. The  walls  of  the  offering  chambers 
of  the  nobles,  at  this  time  cut  in  the 
rock,  still  bear  representations  from 
life  carved  in  relief  The  symbolical 
doors  and  the  offering  formulas  still 
mark  the  spot  where  the  dead  receive 
the  necessities  of  life  from  the  living. 
All  graves  of  every  class  testify  to 
the  faith  in  a  life  after  death  similar 
to  life  on  earth.  Yet  certain  modifi- 
cations are  apparent  which  are  signifi- 
cant for  the  future  development  of  the 
conception  of  immortality:  (1)  the 
pyramid  texts  are  used  by  the  pro- 
vincial nobles  for  their  own  benefit; 
(2)  Abydos  assumes  a  great  import- 


48     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

ance  as  the  burial  place  of  Osiris; 
(3)  the  swathed  mummy  comes  into 
general  use  in  burials. 

The  first  identification  of  the  king 
with  Osiris  in  the  pyramid  texts  marks 
the  conception  of  a  better  immortal- 
ity for  him.  So,  as  the  possibility  of 
a  better  immortality  was  claimed  by 
wider  and  wider  circles  of  men,  the 
use  of  the  pyramid  texts,  or  similar 
texts,  also  became  wider.  In  the  Mid- 
dle Empire,  texts  practically  identical 
with  the  pyramid  texts,  but  furnished 
with  illustrations  somewhat  like  those 
of  the  later  books  of  the  dead,  are  found 
in  the  coffins  of  provincial  nobles. 

The  power  of  the  monarchy  had 
been  weakening  during  the  Fifth  and 
Sixth  Dynasties,  partly  owing  to  the 
dissipation  of  national  resources  by 


OF   IMMORTALITY         49 

royal  extravagance,  partly  owing  to 
other  causes.  After  the  Sixth  Dynasty, 
the  country  was  clearly  in  a  period 
of  economic  depression ;  and  the  gov- 
ernment was  broken  up  into  a  series 
of  nearly  independent  baronies  corre- 
sponding roughly  to  the  later  divis- 
ion  into   provinces  or  nomes.    Our 
material  is  scanty.  The  tombs  of  very 
few  great  men  have  been  found.  But 
when   in   the    Twelfth    Dynasty   an 
abundance  of  material  is  at  hand,  we 
see,  alongside  the  old  forms  of  the 
burial  customs,  the  use  of  the  pyramid 
texts  on  the  inside  walls  of  the  coffins 
of  the  great  man.  It  was  now  possible 
for  the  ha  of  the  great  landed  noble 
to  seek  refuge  with  the  gods  in  the 
northwest  heavens  and  share  their  life. 
The  increasing  importance  of  Aby- 


50     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

dos  as  the  burial  place  of  Osiris  is  of 
still  greater  significance.  The  tomb  of 
a  king  of  the  First  Dynasty  was  identi- 
fied by  the  priests  as  the  actual  burial 
place  of  Osiris.  Many  great  people 
made  graves  for  themselves  in  the  same 
field;  or,  if  they  lived  at  a  distance,  built 
empty  cenotaphs  there.  A  great  tem- 
ple of  Osiris  stood  near  by,  and  became 
the  centre  of  the  celebration  of  mys- 
teries illustrating  the  death  and  revival 
of  Osiris.  Fortunately,  a  certain  high 
official  named  I-kher-nofret  has  left 
us  an  account  of  the  Osiris  passion- 
play  as  performed  under  his  oversight 
in  the  nineteenth  year  of  Sesostris  III, 
nearly  two  thousandyearsbeforeChrist' 

»  See  Schafer*  s  article,  *  *  Die  Osiris-my  sterien,  *  * 
in  Sethe's  JJntersuchungen  zur  Gescbicbte  Aegyp- 
tens,  IV,  2,  pp.  1-42. 


OF   IMMORTALITY  51 

The  play  began  by  the  procession  of 
the  statue  of  the  jackal-god  Wep-wawet 
(the  road-opener)  going  forth  to  help 
his  father  Osiris.  Then  the  statue  of 
Osiris  himself  in  the  Neshemet  boat 
came  forth  as  triumphant  king  of  the 
earth.  Sham  battles  took  place  refer- 
ring to  the  conquest  of  the  earth  by 
Osiris.  These  processions  were  only 
introductory.  The  principal  procession 
took  place  on  the  following  day  (or 
days),  when  Osiris  went  forth  to  his 
death  at  Nedit.  The  actual  death  scene 
certainly  took  place  in  secret.  But 
when  the  dead  body  was  found,  the 
multitude  joined  in  the  wailing  and 
the  lamentations.  The  god  Thoth  went 
forth  in  a  boat  and  brought  back  the 
body  of  Osiris.  The  body  was  prepared 
for  burial  and  taken  in  funeral  proces- 


52     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

sion  to  the  grave  at  Peker.  Osiris  was 
avenged  on  his  enemies  in  a  great  bat- 
tle on  the  water  at  Nedit.  Finally,  the 
god,  his  life  revived,  comes  from  Peker 
in  triumphant  procession  and  enters 
his  temple  at  Abydos. 

Osiris  mysteries  were  celebrated  at 
other  places,  at  least  in  later  times  and 
perhaps  even  in  the  Middle  Empire ; 
but  it  is  not  easy  to  discern  the  part 
these  mysteries  played  in  the  Middle 
Empire  in  the  beliefs  of  the  common 
people  regarding  their  immortality. 
The  Osiris  story  was  one  of  the  most 
widespread  in  Egypt,  and,  powerful 
in  its  effect  on  the  feelings  of  all 
classes,  was  certain,  sooner  or  later, 
to  prepare  the  way  for  a  general  be- 
lief in  a  better  immortality;  but,  if 
we  may  judge  from  the  burial  cus- 


OF   IMMORTALITY  53 

toms,  the  great  mass  of  the  people 
still  believed  merely  in  an  underworld, 
Earu,  a  duplicate  of  the  earthly  life, 
but  with  greater  possibilities  of  danger 
and  evil. 

During  the  course  of  Egyptian  his- 
tory the  position  in  which  the  body  is 
buried  undergoes  a  series  of  remark- 
able changes.  During  the  early  pre- 
dynastic  period,  the  body,  loosely 
enfolded  in  cloths  and  skins,  is  laid 
in  the  grave  doubled  up  on  the  left 
side,  usually  with  the  head  south  (i.e. 
upstream).  This  position  becomes 
the  custom,  with  very  few  excep- 
tions, during  the  late  predynastic 
period  and  the  first  three  dynasties. 
Throughout  the  Fourth  to  Sixth 
Dynasties,  the  body  was  in  the  same 
position,  but   with   the   head   north, 


54    EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

loosely  covered  with  shawls  and  gar- 
ments. The  crouching  position,  with 
some  slight  modifications,  continues 
to  be  used  for  the  poorest  class  down 
to  the  New  Empire.  Among  the  Nu- 
bians, it  is  universal  to  the  New  Empire 
and  customary  even  later  in  unmixed 
Nubian  communities.  The  swathed 
extended  burials  begin  in  Egypt  in 
the  Fourth  Dynasty,  so  far  as  remains 
are  preserved.  Some  members  of  the 
royal  family  of  Cheops  were  buried  in 
swathed  wrapping,  lying  extended  on 
the  left  side  with  the  knees  bent.  Dur- 
ing the  Fifth  and  Sixth  Dynasties  this 
extended  position  on  the  side  becomes 
customary  for  the  better  classes ;  and 
during  the  Middle  Empire  it  becomes 
almost  universal. 

The  final  burial  position,  the  swathed 


OF   IMMORTALITY  55 

mummy  lying  extended  on  the  back, 
does  not  become  general  until  the 
New  Empire,  about  1 600  b.c,  although 
it  is  the  position  hitherto  regarded 
as  the  characteristic  Egyptian  burial 
position.  A  few  isolated  cases,  some 
of  them  perhaps  accidental,  occur  as 
early  as  the  Old  Empire ;  but  in  the 
New  Empire  the  extended  burial  on 
the  back  is  practically  the  only  one  to 
be  observed.  In  other  words,  begin- 
ning in  the  predynastic  period  with  a 
burial  position  which  may  be  called 
natural  and  primitive,  the  Egyptian 
gradually  adopted  a  position  which 
imitated  the  form  of  the  dead  Osiris, 
the  god  of  the  dead.  Each  new 
change  is  first  adopted  by  the  royal 
family,  and  is  taken  up  by  the  other 
classes  in  turn  until  it  becomes  uni- 


56     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

versal.  In  the  final  form,  the  mummy 
was  a  simulacrum  of  the  dead  as 
Osiris. 

Alongside  these  changes  in  the 
burial  position  progressed  the  art  of 
preserving  the  body.  The  earliest  at- 
tempts were  made  on  the  body  of  the 
king ;  and  the  knowledge  of  embalm- 
ing gained  in  preserving  his  body  was 
gradually  utilized  for  the  higher  classes 
and  finally  for  all  but  the  poorest.  It 
seems  indisputable  that  the  royal  per- 
sonages of  the  Fourth  and  Sixth 
Dynasties  were  mummified  —  i.e.  the 
entrails  were  drawn,  the  body  prepared 
with  spices  and  resins  and  wrapped 
tightly  in  cloths  smeared  with  resin. 
But  the  mummies  of  the  nobles,  even 
of  this  period,  show  no  trace  of  such 
treatment.    The   receptacles    for  the 


OF   IMMORTALITY  57 

viscera  are  sometimes  found  in  their 
graves  in  the  Sixth  Dynasty,  but  are, 
as  a  rule,  empty,  being  mere  dummy 
vases.  Even  in  the  Middle  Empire, 
the  preservation  of  the  bodies  of  the 
better  classes  was  extremely  imperfect. 
The  bundles  of  wrappings  have  kept 
their  form  to  the  present  day  and  it 
seems  as  if  the  mummy  were  still  in- 
tact; but  an  examination  of  the  interior 
shows  only  loose  bones.  Successful 
mummification  appears  among  better- 
class  people  in  the  New  Empire  for 
the  first  time  and  becomes  a  general 
custom  in  the  Late  Period.  The  pro- 
cesses of  successful  mummification 
necessitated  the  practical  destruction 
of  the  body. 

In  the  Middle  Empire,  which  is  the 
period  under  discussion,  the  process 


58     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

of  mummification  had  reached  a  mid- 
dle stage,  and,  while  we  are  unable  to 
explain  exactly  the  causal  relation- 
ship, it  is  clear  that  this  advance  in 
the  treatment  of  the  body  accompanied 
a  spread  of  the  belief  in  the  Osirian 
immortality. 

VII.   THE  NEW  EMPIRE 

The  New  Empire  (1600-1200  b.c.) 
was  the  great  period  of  foreign  con- 
quest. The  Hyksos,  Asiatic  invaders, 
had  held  Egypt  for  a  century  or  more. 
The  Theban  princes  who  drove  them 
out  became  kings  of  Egypt,  and  fol- 
lowed them  into  Asia.  With  an  army 
trained  in  war  by  the  long  struggle  with 
the  Hyksos,  the  Egyptian  kings,  hav- 
ing tasted  the  sweetness  of  the  spoils 


OF   IMMORTALITY  59 

of  war,  entered  on  the  conquest  of 
western  Asia  and  the  Sudan.  The 
plunder  of  both  these  regions  poured 
into  Egypt.  Under  Thothmes  III  an 
annual  campaign  was  conducted  into 
Syria  to  bring  back  the  spoils  and  the 
tribute.  Foreign  slaves  and  the  pro- 
ducts of  foreign  handicraft  were  for  sale 
in  every  market-place.  The  treasury 
was  filled  to  overflowing.  A  large  share 
was  assigned  to  Amon,  the  god  of  the 
Theban  family.  Temples  were  built 
for  him;  estates  established  for  the 
maintenance  of  his  rites;  thousands  of 
priests  enrolled  for  the  service  of  his 
properties.  The  god  became,  in  a  ma- 
terial sense,  the  greatest  god  in  Egypt, 
the  national  god;  and  his  priesthood 
became  the  most  powerful  organiza- 
tion in  the  kingdom.  The  high  priest 


6o    EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

of  Amon  usurped  the  power  of  the 
king  and  finally  supplanted  him.  Such 
was  the  period  in  which  the  next  great 
development  of  the  Egyptian  idea  of 
immortality  is  to  be  noted  —  a  period 
of  priestly  activity  in  the  beginning 
and  of  priestly  domination  in  the  end. 
The  priests  are  the  scribes,  the  men 
of  learning.  They  have  the  lore  of 
all  magic,  medicine,  rules  of  conduct, 
religious  rites.  It  is  not  mere  chance, 
therefore,  that  the  New  Empire  was 
marked  by  a  great  increase  of  magic 
in  all  its  forms  —  texts  and  symbolic 
objects — and  by  a  great  development 
in  the  knowledge  of  the  other  world. 
In  some  of  the  texts  the  geography  of 
the  underworld,  in  which  Osiris  is  king, 
is  worked  out  in  great  detail.  When 
the  sun  sets  in  the  west,  Ra  in  his 


OF   IMMORTALITY  6i 

boat  enters  the  underworld  and  passes 
through  it  during  the  twelve  hours  of 
the  night,  bringing  light  and  happi- 
ness to  those  who  are  in  the  under- 
world. In  the  effort  to  secure  the  tomb 
against  plundering,  the  royal  graves  had 
been  cut  in  the  solid  rock, — long  and 
complicated  passages  with  false  leads 
and  deceptive  turns  and  the  burial 
chamber  in  an  unexpected  place.  The 
long  walls  of  these  rooms  presented  a 
great  surface  suitable  to  decoration, 
and  they  were  utilized  to  depict  scenes 
from  the  underworld  and  the  passage 
of  Ra  through  it,  so  that  the  tombs 
became  in  fact  representations  of  the 
land  of  the  dead,  and  were  so  consid- 
ered. These  royal  tombs  were  at  a 
distance  from  the  cultivated  land,  hid- 
den in  valleys  in  the  desert.  Their  fu- 


62     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

nerary  temples  were  built  on  the  edge 
of  the  desert  beside  the  temples  of  the 
gods  of  the  place. 

Such  fantastical  reconstructions  of 
the  other  world,  however,  never  found 
general  favor  and  are  confined  to  a 
few  royal  tombs.  The  priests  and  other 
prominent  people  have  rolls  of  papy- 
rus buried  with  them,  bearing  copies 
of  books  of  the  dead.  These  books  of 
the  dead  are  made  up  of  a  series  of 
chapters,  each  complete  in  itself  and 
each  dealing  with  some  phase  of  the 
future  life.  There  is  no  set  order  of 
chapters.  There  is  no  fixed  number 
of  chapters.  Each  scribe  seems  to  have 
selected  the  chapters  which  he  consid- 
ered useful.  The  general  title  is:  Chap- 
ters of  the  going  forth  by  day.  The 
general  character  may  be  given  by  a 


OF   IMMORTALITY         63 

paragraph  attached  to  one  of  the  chap- 
ters in  the  Book  of  Ani  the  Scribe  : ' 
"  If  this  book  be  known  on  earth  and 
written  on  the  coffin,  it  is  my  mouth. 
He  shall  come  forth  by  day  in  any 
form  he  desires  and  he  shall  go  into  his 
place  without  being  prevented.  There 
shall  be  given  to  him  bread  and  beer 
and  meat  upon  the  altar  of  Osiris.  He 
shall  enter  in,  in  peace,  to  the  field  of 
Earu  according  to  this  decree  of  the  one 
who  is  in  the  City  of  Dedu.  There 
shall  be  given  to  him  wheat  and  barley 
there.  He  shall  flourish  as  he  did  upon 
earth.  He  shall  do  his  desires  like  these 
nine  Gods  who  are  in  the  underworld, 
as  found  true  millions  of  times.  He  is 
the  Osiris :  the  Scribe  Ani."  There  are 
chapters  to  overcome  all  the  evil  which 
'  Edited  by  E.  A.  W.  Budge,  p.  26. 


64     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

a  soul  may  encounter ;  there  are  words 
to  greet  all  the  gods  whom  the  soul 
desires  to  visit.  The  Scribe  Ani  had  an 
exceptional  position  on  earth;  he  de- 
sires to  do  his  desire  in  the  other  world; 
and  in  the  name  of  Osiris  he  recites  the 
magic  words  that  bring  him  the  power. 
He  is  Ani,  but  he  calls  himself  Osiris; 
just  as  the  priestly  doctor  mixes  his 
dose  of  medicine  and  calls  it  "  the  eye 
of  Horus  tested  and  found  true." 

In  addition  to  magical  texts,  there 
are  also  magical,  or  symbolic,  objects 
placed  in  the  graves,  —  amulets  of  va- 
rious kinds  which  were  to  be  used  in 
the  other  world.  Some  of  these  were 
simply  the  amulets  used  in  daily  life 
to  guard  against  sickness,  bite  of  snake, 
and  other  earthly  evils  which  were  also 
incident  to  the  life  after  death.  Other 


OF   IMMORTALITY         65 

amulets,  like  the  so-called  Ushabtiu, 
were  to  meet  special  conditions  of  the 
other  world.  These  Ushabtiu,  or  "an- 
swerers," were  little  images  of  work- 
men bearing  agricultural  implements 
whose  duty  it  was  to  take  the  place  of 
the  dead  in  the  fields  of  Earu  when 
Osiris  as  king  called  him  to  do  his 
share  of  the  field  work.  Even  the  king 
appears  liable  to  this  service,  and  for 
him  thousands  of  these  figures  were 
made,  —  sometimes  labeled  each  with 
the  day  of  the  year.  In  a  few  cases 
there  was  even  a  charm  written  on  the 
figure  to  prevent  it  hearing  the  com- 
mand of  any  one  but  its  master. 

Alongside  these  manifold  manifes- 
tations of  the  belief  in  magic,  other 
furniture  —  implements,  weapons,  and 
utensils  —  are  still  placed  in  the  grave. 


66     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

The  offering  places  are  still  main- 
tained. All  burials  are  now  extended 
on  the  back  and  wrapped  in  bandages. 
Yet  the  common  graves  lack  the  re- 
ceptacles for  the  viscera,  lack  magical 
texts,  lack  ushabtiu,  and  —  in  a  word 
—  lack  all  those  things  which  are 
typical  of  the  better-class  graves  of 
the  period.  The  conception  of  the 
future  life  among  the  common  people 
is  apparently  not  essentially  different 
from  that  of  the  Old  Empire.  But  the 
books  of  the  dead  and  the  offering 
formulas  show  that  the  priests  and  high 
officials  at  death  were  called  Osiris. 

By  the  end  of  the  Late  Period  the 
Osiris  cult  of  the  dead  had  come 
to  be  universal.  No  doubt  political 
events  had  much  to  do  with  this.  The 
absorption  of  the  powers  of  the  king 


OF   IMMORTALITY         67 

by  the  priesthood  of  the  national  god 
Amon-Ra,  the  crushing  of  the  nobility 
by  a  succession  of  foreign  invaders, 
and  the  general  uncertainty  of  life,  had 
disturbed  the  old  fixed  relations.  The 
hope  of  every  Egyptian  turned  to  a 
glorified  future  life  as  Osiris. 

The  tendency  to  use  magical  texts 
and  symbolic  objects  reached  its  height. 
About  700  B.C.  a  revival  of  national 
life,  brought  about  by  the  establish- 
ment of  the  Egyptian  kings  of  Sais 
as  kings  of  Egypt,  led  to  a  renaissance 
of  Egyptian  art.  The  old  monuments 
were  copied  and  imitated,  the  old 
funerary  texts  and  offering  formulas 
were  sought  out  in  the  older  graves. 
Even  the  pyramid  texts  reappear  after 
one  thousand  years  of  practical  obliv- 
ion. The  value  of  master  words  was 


68     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

so  firmly  fixed  in  the  Egyptian  mind 
that  misunderstood  texts  of  all  sorts 
were  copied  out  and  placed  in  the 
graves  to  secure  to  the  dead  some 
vague  benefit  in  the  other  world. 

The  process  of  mummification  was 
at  its  height.  The  bodies  were  no  longer 
preserved.  The  process  was  merely 
the  creation  of  a  simulacrum  of  the 
dead  Osiris  So-and-So.  All  the  per- 
ishable parts  of  the  body  were  re- 
moved or  destroyed  by  chemicals. 
Only  the  skin,  bones,  hair,  and  teeth 
remained  to  be  padded  with  mud  and 
resin,  wrapped  in  cloths,  covered  with 
a  painted  and  gilded  cartonnage  to 
represent  the  glorified  Osiris  mummy. 


OF  IMMORTALITY         69 

VIII.   THE  PTOLEMAIC-ROMAN 
PERIOD 

In  the  Ptolemaic-Roman  period  we 
see  the  final  stage  of  the  Osiris  cult. 
Every  dead  man  is  laid  in  his  grave 
without  furniture,  prepared  as  a  sim- 
ulacrum of  Osiris.  The  wealthiest 
people  have  gilded  and  painted 
mummy  cases  with  amulets  and  funer- 
ary papyrus.  The  poorer  are  merely 
bundles  of  wrappings.  Every  dead 
man  is  Osiris,  and  no  doubt  carried 
with  him  words  learned  on  earth  to 
gain  his  way  to  a  place  in  the  king- 
dom of  Osiris.  The  offering  places 
above  the  grave  are  still  made  and 
offerings  are  still  brought. 

To  gain  some  idea  of  the  way  in 
which  these  two  conceptions  of  the 


70     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

living  dead  were  worked  out  in  actual 
life,  one  has  only  to  turn  to  the  funer- 
ary customs  of  the  modern  Egyptians. 
In  the  case  of  both  Christians  and 
Moslems,  the  grave  rites  are  similar; 
but  with  those  of  the  Moslems  I  am 
more  familiar.  The  grave  consists  still 
of  the  two  parts,  the  burying  place 
and  the  offering  place.  The  swathed 
body  is  laid  on  the  right  side,  with  the 
right  hand  under  the  cheek  and  the 
face  towards  Mecca.  At  the  burial 
the  confession  of  the  faith  is  recited 
over  and  over,  lest  the  dead  forget  it. 
Korans  are  sometimes  placed  in  the 
graves;  and  I  have  even  seen  a  con- 
fession of  the  faith  written  on  paper 
and  placed  on  a  twig  before  the  face 
of  the  dead.  At  the  appointed  sea- 
sons—especially at  the  great  Feast 


OF   IMMORTALITY  71 

of  Sacrifice — offerings  are  brought 
to  the  grave.  The  family  party  passes 
through  the  cemetery,  the  women 
bearing  baskets  of  bread  and  bottles 
of  water,  the  men  turning  the  head  to 
the  right  and  to  the  left  and  reciting 
the  fatha  in  propitiation  of  the  spirits. 
The  party  enters  the  offering  inclosure 
of  the  grave  of  their  relative.  The 
wives  greet  the  dead  —  "  Peace  unto 
thee,  oh,  my  husband,  oh,  my  father, 
we  have  wept  until  we  have  watered 
the  earth  with  our  tears  on  thy  ac- 
count." The  offerings  are  .laid  before 
the  tomb.  A  scribe  is  called  and  re- 
cites or  reads  some  chapter  of  the 
Koran  over  and  over,  one  hundred, 
one  hundred  and  fifty,  five  hundred, 
one  thousand  times,  and  concludes: 
"  I  have  read  this  for  thee,  oh,  such 


72     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

and  such  a  one."  Or,  "I  have  trans- 
ferred the  merit  of  this  to  thee."  When 
you  question  these  people  as  to  the 
particulars  of  their  belief,  you  find 
their  ideas  vague  and  indefinite. 
Among  the  men  a  dispute  quickly 
starts,  —  the  people  who  have  been 
found  good  by  the  examining  an- 
gels on  the  night  of  the  burial  are 
there,  but  the  bad  are  somewhere 
else.  No,  says  another,  they  are  all  in 
their  graves,  but  the  bad  suffer  tor- 
ment. Still  another  maintains  that  the 
good  have  already  passed  to  the  low- 
est heaven.  These  are  all  mere  rem- 
nants of  theological  discussions  caught 
from  the  sheikhs.  The  women  stolidly 
maintain  that  the  dead  are  in  their 
tombs  and  the  oflferings  must  be 
brought.  When  you   inquire  which 


OF  IMMORTALITY         73 

are  the  good  and  which  the  bad,  there 
is  again  a  great  divergence  of  opinion; 
but  it  is  clear  that  every  man  be- 
lieves in  his  heart  that  a  knowledge 
of  the  prayers  and  forms  of  the  Mos- 
lem religion  is  absolutely  essential  and 
entirely  sufficient  to  gain  a  desirable 
future  life.  The  great  master  word  is 
the  confession  of  faith  —  there  is  no 
god  but  Allah  and  Mohammed  is  his 
prophet. 

So  it  must  have  been  in  the  last 
stage  of  the  Osiris  cult.  Immortality, 
a  glorified  future  existence  as  an  Osiris 
in  the  kingdom  of  Osiris,  with  all  the 
pleasures  and  comforts  of  life,  was  se- 
cured to  him  who  was  buried  with  the 
proper  rites  and  knew  the  magic  words. 
And  yet  the  old  feeling  was  never  lost 
that  the  dead  was  somehow  in  the 


74     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

grave  and  might  suffer  hunger  and 
thirst. 

When  Christianity  came  into  Egypt, 
all  the  gaudy  apparatus  of  the  Osiris 
religion  was  swept  out  of  existence. 
The  body  was  to  rise  again  and  might 
not  be  mutilated.  Mummification, 
which  destroyed  the  body  in  order  to 
preserve  a  conventional  simulacrum, 
ceased  abruptly.  Grave  furniture  was 
of  course  unthinkable.  But  the  use  of 
charms  did  not  cease.  Crosses  were 
embroidered  in  the  gravecloths;  or 
small  crosses  of  metal  or  wood  placed 
on  the  breast  or  arm;  the  gravestone 
bore  a  simple  prayer  to  the  Holy  Spirit 
for  the  peaceful  rest  of  the  soul.  But 
the  offering  place  was  still  maintained; 
prayers  were  recited  on  the  feast  days; 
lamps  were  allowed  to  remain  at  the 


OF   IMMORTALITY  75 

grave;  food  was  brought,  but   given 
to  the  poor. 

In  all  periods  there  are  thousands  of 
graves  of  poor  people  without  a  single 
thing  to  secure  their  future  life, — 
people  who  were  probably  content 
simply  to  lay  down  the  burdens  of  life. 
In  the  Christian  period  these  thousands 
of  unnamed  dead  all  have  one  mark. 
They  are  laid  with  their  feet  to  the 
east.  Each  one  was  a  Christian  and  se- 
cure in  his  future  life,  according  to  his 
faith  and  his  life  on  earth. 

IX.   SUMMARY 

To  sum  up,  the  essential  idea  of  the 
Egyptian  conception  of  immortality 
was  that  the  ghost  or  spirit  of  the  man 
preserved  the  personality  and  the  form 


76    EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

of  the  man  in  the  existence  after  death; 
that  this  spirit  had  the  same  desires,  the 
same  pleasures,  the  same  necessities, 
and  the  same  fears  as  on  earth.  Life 
after  death  was  a  duplicate  of  life  on 
earth.  On  earth  life  depended  on  work, 
on  getting  food  from  the  fields  and  the 
herds,  on  forming  stone  and  metal, 
hide  and  vegetable  fibre,  into  useful 
objects.  In  other  words,  life  depended 
on  human  power  over  the  natural  ma- 
terials of  the  earth.  At  the  same  time 
there  were  many  things  which  could 
not  be  controlled  by  power  over  the 
earth  and  its  elements,  —  the  sting  of 
the  scorpion,  the  bite  of  the  adder,  the 
rise  of  the  Nile,  sickness,  the  sudden 
onslaught  of  the  enemy,  the  stray- 
ing of  cattle,  the  disfavor  of  the  god. 
For  these  evils  man's  only  hope  was 


OF   IMMORTALITY  77 

magic,  —  the  set  words  spoken  in 
the  proper  manner  which  have  power 
over  all  unseen  influence.  So  in  the 
case  of  life  after  death,  all  which  hu- 
man strength  can  provide  of  stores  of 
grain  and  drink  and  garments  must 
be  secured  for  his  use;  but  he  must 
also  be  provided  with  the  magic  words 
to  meet  the  chance  evils  of  the  future 
life. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  the  unknown 
future  presented  to  the  imagination 
many  evils  unknown  on  earth.  The 
spirit  might  forget  its  name,  it  might 
lose  its  heart,  it  might  be  bound  fast  by- 
evil  powers  in  the  grave  and  unable 
to  come  forth  by  day.  The  mummy 
might  decay;  the  spirit  might  forget 
its  form.  So,  as  time  went  on,  the  use 
of  magic  words  became  of  greater  and 


78     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

greater  importance,  until,  to  modern 
eyes,  it  seemed  to  overshadow  all  else 
in  the  Egyptian  conception  of  life  after 
death. 

As  a  part  of  the  magical  provisions 
of  the  dead,  the  Osiris  myth,  probably 
built  up  in  explanation  of  old  rites, 
was  drawn  into  the  belief  in  a  future 
life,  and  apparently  at  the  beginning 
solely  for  the  benefit  of  the  kingy  for  the 
benefit  of  those  who  claimed  a  certain 
divinity  on  earth.  The  earth-god  Osiris, 
god  of  the  living,  had  died  and  had 
been  brought  to  life  as  god  of  the  dead. 
So,  also,  the  earth-king,  the  Horus,  the 
son  of  Ra,  must  die,  but  he  also  would 
live  again  in  the  other  world  and  share 
the  throne  of  Osiris.  More  than  this 
even,  he  became  Osiris.  He  was  ad- 
mitted to  the  life  of  the  gods.    Of 


OF   IMMORTALITY  79 

course  the  ideas  of  the  existence  of  the 
gods  were  never  clear  and  consistent. 
They  lived  in  secret  places,  their 
whole  life  was  mysterious  as  well  as 
powerful.  These  are  the  field  of  know- 
ledge which  the  Egyptian  mind  could 
not  oversee  with  any  satisfaction  to  it- 
self The  most  it  could  do  was  to  form- 
ulate the  magic  words,  invoking  the 
names  of  the  gods  and  conjuring  them 
by  the  events  in  the  Osiris  myth  to 
accept  this  king  as  Osiris.  The  excep- 
tional man,  the  super-man,  must  have 
an  exceptional  future  life ;  but  to  ob- 
tain it,  he  must  have  the  knowledge 
of  the  names  and  words  necessary  to 
force  the  powers  of  the  other  world. 

Thus  the  idea  of  an  exceptional  fu- 
ture life,  a  heaven,  was  brought  into 
the  Egyptian  conception  of  life  after 


8o     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

death.  Admission  to  it  depended  on 
the  exceptional  position  on  earth  of 
those  admitted.  As  even  this  excep- 
tional position  was  only  of  avail  when 
combined  with  the  knowledge  of  cer- 
tain formulas,  it  is  not  difficult  to  see 
how  the  knowledge  of  these  formulas 
might  be  considered  sufficient  to  ob- 
tain the  better  future  life,  even  for 
others  than  the  king.  When  in  the  de- 
pression that  followed  the  extravagance 
of  the  pyramid  age  the  central  mon- 
archy lost  its  power,  Egypt  broke  up 
into  a  series  of  tribal  baronies  (nomes). 
In  each  was  a  ruler  almost  independent 
of  the  king,  a  man  who  might  presume 
with  the  proper  knowledge  to  claim 
a  glorified  future  life  similar  to  that  of 
the  king.  And,  indeed,  we  find  from 
the  burial  inscriptions  of  the  Middle 


OF   IMMORTALITY         8i 

Empire  that  such  was  the  result.  Feud- 
alism extended  the  possibilities  of 
heaven  to  the  great  nobles.  In  the 
New  Empire,  the  royal  power  was 
gradually  absorbed  by  the  priestly  or- 
ganization of  the  national  religion  — 
the  religion  of  Amon-Ra;  and  the 
principle  comes  into  practice  that  any 
priest  having  the  necessary  knowledge 
could  obtain  for  himself  an  exceptional 
place  in  the  future  life.  The  Osirian 
burial  customs  spread  even  among  the 
people.  The  swathed  body  extended 
on  the  back  becomes  universal,  even 
though  true  mummification  was  still 
only  for  the  rich. 

In  the  Ptolemaic  period,  the  prepa- 
ration of  all  the  apparatus  of  the  Osi- 
ris burial  was  divided  up  into  trades. 
Factories,  one  may  say,  turned  out 


82     EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

mummy  cases  of  various  kinds,  with 
a  scale  of  prices  to  fit  every  purse. 
Other  factories  turned  out  amulets  and 
charms.  Magical  texts,  the  preparation 
of  the  body,  the  construction  of  the 
grave  —  all  things  were  done  by  regu- 
lar crafts.  The  cheapening  of  the  ap- 
paratus is  most  striking.  At  the  same 
time  all  but  the  poorest  burials  bear 
direct  evidence  of  their  character  as 
Osiris  burials. 

On  the  side  of  the  moral  require- 
ment we  must  not  look  too  closely. 
There  were  powerful  words  which 
could  compel  even  the  great  judges 
of  the  dead  to  return  a  favorable  ver- 
dict. There  were  magic  hearts  of  stone 
which  might  be  worn  in  place  of  the 
heart,  and,  laid  in  the  scales  by  Anubis, 
weigh  heavier  than  the  truth.     One 


OF   IMMORTALITY         83 

might  by  words  compel  Anubis  to 
accept  this  stone  heart  instead  of  the 
real  heart. 

In  general,  one  may  say  that  the 
hope  of  immortality  had  little  influ- 
ence on  the  moral  life  of  the  ordinary 
Egyptian.  The  moral  code  was  simple 
and  sound  and  not  greatly  different 
from  other  primitive  codes,  —  forbid- 
ding all  those  things  which  the  body 
of  men  regard  as  unpleasant  in  others, 
commanding  the  plain  virtues  which 
were  found  pleasant  in  others.  Here, 
again,  I  think  we  may  well  look  to 
modern  Egypt  for  a  picture  of  ancient 
Egypt.  We  must  not  exaggerate  the 
influence  of  the  belief  in  immortality 
on  general  morality.  We  must  not 
think  too  well  of  the  life  of  the  people 
—  nor,  on  the  other  hand,  too  evil. 


84    EGYPTIAN   CONCEPTION 

They  had  their  sins  and  their  virtues. 
The  common  herd  was  driven  by  ne- 
cessity and  lived  as  it  could.  They 
clung  to  the  belief  in  a  life  in  the 
grave.  The  greater  people  had  leisure 
to  learn  and  to  provide  the  magic  nec- 
essary to  secure  a  comfortable  future 
life.  They  loved  life  and  hated  death. 
Thus  it  was  when  the  priests  of 
the  Osiris-Isis  religion  made  their  bid 
to  the  classical  world.  They  offered 
immortality  by  initiation.  Learn  the 
proper  rites,  learn  the  master  words, 
and  secure  eternal  life  among  the 
great  gods.  It  was  a  religion  for  the 
exceptional  man  down  to  the  last; 
it  required  training  and  knowledge. 
Even  in  its  most  popular  form  in  the 
Ptolemaic  period,  a  specially  instructed 
class  was  required,  who  sold  for  money 


OF   IMMORTALITY  85 

the  benefits  of  their  knowledge,  and 
men  took  rank  in  their  security  of  fu- 
ture life  according  to  their  means. 

Not  until  Christianity  came,  offer- 
ing eternal  life  free  and  without  price, 
did  the  common  people  find  at  last  a 
road  open  to  equal  immortality  with 
the  great  men  of  the  earth. 


THE    END 


J  >  > 


.*.  •  • 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U  .  S   .  A 


^ 


14  1^AYUSE  o^D^ 


T  ■D2lA-60m-3,''[0 


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